The Sentence Is the Sentence

Last week I wrote about the attempted execution of convicted murderer Christa Pike. As of this writing she is still alive and appears to be doing fine. It was expected that she had suffered brain damage. Instead she is conscious and talking, according to reports.

Then another piece of news hit this week. President Trump approved the execution by firing squad of former U.S. Army officer Nidal Hasan. We also learn that Hasan’s execution will be live streamed.

Here's one news story about this: [VIDEO]

CONTENT WARNING: This section describes a mass shooting, the deaths of service members and a civilian, and a capital case now moving toward execution.

Nidal Malik Hasan was a major and a psychiatrist in the U.S. Army. Born in Virginia in 1970 to Palestinian immigrant parents, he enlisted after high school, took a commission, and completed medical school through the military. By 2009 he was treating soldiers at Fort Hood.

On the afternoon of November 5, 2009, he walked into a readiness center where troops were getting clearances for deployment or return. He shouted “Allahu Akbar,” then opened fire with a handgun. Thirteen people were killed—mostly soldiers, one of them a pregnant private—and more than thirty others were wounded. Police officers shot him; the wounds left him paralyzed from the waist down.

At his 2013 court-martial he represented himself. He told the panel he was the shooter, called no witnesses, and offered essentially no defense. The same military jury that convicted him of thirteen counts of premeditated murder and thirty-two counts of attempted premeditated murder sentenced him to death, dismissal, and forfeiture of pay. He showed little reaction.

The appeals ran for years. The Supreme Court declined further review in 2025. In early October 2026 President Trump approved the sentence after a recommendation from the Defense Secretary. The Army set execution by firing squad for December 3, 2026, at Fort Hood. If carried out it would be the first military execution since 1961.

That is the sequence as the record stands: an officer and doctor who attacked unarmed soldiers and a civilian at his own post, a trial in which he declined to contest the facts, a death sentence imposed by a panel of officers, and a date now fixed more than sixteen years later.

Their Choice, Not the Camera

Just like the Pike case, the facts are not in dispute. Hasan admitted he was the shooter. I am not pro-capital punishment as a general rule, but these two are clearly guilty of the crimes they committed.

I took issue with Pike’s reported behavior after the killing—passing around pieces of the victim’s skull. In Hasan’s case the motive was increasing radicalization. What really caught my attention via Glenn Beck was the detail about Private Francheska Velez, the 21-year-old from Chicago who was pregnant and screaming about her unborn baby when the shooting started. He didn't care and shot her. That is horrendous.

There is no argument from me about the crime itself or the conviction. I do have a problem with live-streaming the execution. For members of the affected families or for people in the armed services who want to witness it, I have little issue. That is their choice for their own sense of justice. I do not fully understand the need, but it is not mine to decide.

I do not think the public should see it as a live stream online. The sentence is the sentence. The camera is something else.